Tester needed (simple task)

[Jugem]

Ok, here's the deal. I sent my brother an email containing a zipped file of an executable for a demo I was working on with Game Maker. Apparently, he didn't get it to work. I'm not sure at exactly what point it wouldn't work for him.

So I'd like to send the .exe file of my game to someone here just to see if it will work by itself, or if some of the resources (bitmaps, sound files etc.) need to be included with the executable file. I would have thought that they wouldn't be needed; that game maker takes care of that for you. So that's why I want to test this with someone a little more qualified than my brother.

So I will send a zipped file containing just the .exe to a volunteer. And that person will then tell me if the demo works for them. Simple enough?

Just a quick mention about the demo. It is a vertically scrolling shooter that uses graphics and SFX from a tutorial listed on the game maker website. The music is taken from elsewhere. I was just following the tutorial to create this, and added a few extra things. It's short and pretty easy. The directional keys move your ship, and space bar fires.

So, anyone willing to take up this task?

[Doan the Nado]

I would be willing to do a quick test. Only thing is, I'm pretty sure that the resource files will need to be included for the .exe to work. If they were all bundled with the .exe, that file would be huge, and every time you wanted to start up the game, it would take forever to load. By requiring sound and image files to be kept separately, they can be loaded when needed.

All this means is that you need to have a folder for you game which includes the .exe and your folders containing your resource files. Zip this whole thing, and then all someone has to do is unzip it and run the .exe.

If you think about it, most commercial games are built precisely this way. The shortcut that is in your start menu or on your desktop typically points to a .exe which is in a folder that also contains resource files.

[Jugem]

While much of what you say is true, I'm still curious to know if it will work without the resources included. While I probably will bundle some of them with the end game, there are some I may not want the user to be able to access for whatever reason. Changing the file extension may be one answer to that, but I don't know if the program will be able to read them then. That's another thing I guess I should test sometime.

But anyway, I'll send the zipped .exe file to you. I assume your email is still the same as before? If so, then it's on its way to you now.

EDIT: Forgot to look at your profile, where your email is shown.

[Doan the Nado]

Well, I heard the music and everything. I played for a little while (about a minute), but I kept hearing random explosion noises when I wasn't being hit or shot at. After about a minute, the screen stopped scrolling. I was thinking maybe a boss fight was coming up or something, but the screen just stopped and I could still move around and shoot, the music was still playing, but no more bad guys were coming. Is that what it was supposed to do? If so, everything seemed to work okay, except as I said, the seemingly random explosion noises.

It's funny... that's the same tutorial version that I made, with the plane and everything.

[Jugem]

Heh, I guess that is funny. Good to see it works that way. The random explosion noises weren't random. I gave the ships that flew up from the bottom of the screen those noises. And since this was only a short demo to get me accustomed to the software, I didn't bother using a different SFX for that. Also, I think your ship's bullets may be attacking some ships off the top of the screen that haven't had a chance to appear yet. But I didn't bother testing that since I won't be taking this particular demo further. So I don't know if that was the case.

Sorry to disappoint you with no boss fight. I just stopped the scrolling when the top of the level was reached. So that was intentional. The only reason I was making that short game was to follow along with the tutorial and learn a few things.